My Inner Language Learner Is Hurting

It's the last hour of a long, three-hour class. Attentions are straying, and although I'd love to put us all out of our misery and dismiss everybody early, I can't do it: the final is next week. "Haluk, can you tell me which room of the house has the yellow floor?" I ask hopefully.

Caught off guard, Haluk hunches forward and chews his lip as he desperately searches his book for the answer. But it's no good: he hasn't been paying attention and he doesn't have the foggiest idea what the answer is.

"Teacher, I am very boring," he confesses.

I smile inwardly, tempted to let this one stand. No matter how many times I tell my students that their feelings should be expressed with -ed words and not -ing words -- embarrassed, bored, excited, interested -- they always tell me that they are boring, frustrating, tiring, etc. And although they often frustrate, tire and bore the socks off me, I know what they really mean.

"You mean you're bored, right?"

"Teacher, we are all boring," Haluk insists, gesturing around the classroom. My mouth twitches as I see heads nodding in confirmation. Fortunately, one of Haluk's smarter classmates leans over and whispers a correction.

"Bored!" Haluk almost shouts, throwing up his hands. "We are bored!"

"I know how you feel," I reason, "But we've got to cover these last few units. And there's just one more week until the final exam."

There is a collective sigh. "Teacher," Sevgi groans, "this book very bored."

"Boring," I mutter, irritated beyond reason. Because the truth is, their textbook isn't the least bit boring. There are colorful photographs and cartoons and the language is relevant and useful. The authors have made a real effort to include subjects kids are likely to know about and find interesting, and the vocabulary has been chosen using a carefully researched data base. There are funny stories and diverting games and intriguing puzzles and optional songs, and where do these kids get off calling this book boring?

Ooh, I could show them what boring really is! My first Japanese textbooks had columns full of drills. There were black and white illustrations of dopey looking people in business suits, stilted conversations with no attempt made at humor or intrigue, and long, tiresome vocabulary lists. And our book didn't come with CDs that included songs and funny conversations and interesting extracts from real radio programs; we had to go to the language laboratory to do 30 minutes a day of drills there. Watashi wa yubinkoku e ikimashita, a woman with a perky voice intoned, and we sat with headphones on and parroted the same thing back to no one at all.

The teachers at the school I attended in Japan wrote their own book and it was a brave effort, but it was nothing more than poorly mimeographed pages stapled together, clumsily illustrated. Some attempt was made to make the topics chosen interesting and there was a running story about an American man (with the unlikely and hilarious name of Penny) and his adventures studying Japanese. My fellow classmates and I weren't big fans of the fictitious Penny. He sounded like a hopeless nerd, but also like a huge kiss-ass. He spoke perfect Japanese, knew what to do in every possible situation, and had a lot of admiring Japanese friends. He was depicted as blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and pointy-nosed, which we particularly loathed. The only good thing about the Penny book was that we all got a lot of pleasure running him down after class.

When my Japanese got to the intermediate level, I was desperate to acquire more vocabulary, so I bought half a dozen books to help me. None of them were illustrated and all of them had long lists of vocabulary with phonetic readings and English translations. No context was provided, and there was no attempt made to show the frequency of occurrence.

The year I took the Japanese Language Proficiency Examination, it seemed like every bookstore in Tokyo had suddenly begun to stock Japanese textbooks that were more than grocery lists of drills and vocabulary -- books with good listening exercises, useful vocabulary with plenty of context, and pertinent photographs, all professionally bound and published. All those years I spent studying Japanese, I'd have killed for a textbook half as good as the one my students find so boring.

"This story very boring," Sevgi scoffs, flicking a long manicured nail at the page. The story in question is about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and their house in Mexico City. It might not be a thrill a minute, but it beats drills and vocabulary lists with a stick.

For my next lesson, maybe I'll bring in a couple of phone books. And perhaps an introduction to Penny is in order.

Getting It

"One more time: page one of the listening test, question one!" I shout over the roar of the class.

Coskun doesn't hear me. He's in the midst of a noisy tete-a-tete with Hamit and whatever they're talking about must be compelling: I've tried to hush them up twice now, unsuccessfully. "Coskun! Hamit!" I call again to no avail.

Well, I know a way to get their attention. I flick the CD player's volume switch up as far as it will go and press PLAY, then frown. Nothing's happening. It's taken me five minutes to deliver a pep talk on the mock exam my students have just performed abysmally on and another five minutes to take attendance. The last thing in the world I need is a non-functioning CD player, but that's what I've got.

Just as I'm about to ask a student to exchange the faulty CD player, in comes Sevge, ten minutes late. "Tee-cha, I am here!" she gasps redundantly. I sigh: I've run out of test sheets and Burak won't know where to find these; I'll have to go downstairs and get the CD player and test sheets myself. Leaving the room, I almost collide with Aziz. "Teacher, I am present?" he calls after me, obviously expecting me to rush right back so I can put a check next to his name in the roll book. On my way downstairs, I pass another student making her way upstairs. "Teacher, I am here?" she calls, but I decline to answer.

Two minutes later, I am back with another CD player and half a dozen extra test sheets. The classroom volume has gone up another notch; the natives are restless. I distribute test sheets, pop the CD into the new player, and press PLAY. It doesn't work.

I'm starting to sweat now. Hamit and Coskun are half out of their seats, practically jumping up and down. "Teacher what is problem?" Coskun roars happily. Coskun is the kind who will blame me for anything -- a wasp in the classroom, a wonky chair, a spilled bottle of Coke in the corner, it doesn't matter. I check the plug socket, the settings -- yes, it's on CD -- the light switches. The overhead lights flicker on, flooding the sun-filled classroom, so it isn't a power failure.

"Teacher, I get another player?" suggests Burak, a quiet, respectful boy. I nod wearily.

I've got a handful of kids like Burak in this class. Two pleasant, intelligent central Asian girls, a near-native English speaker from Iran, a few boys who aren't bright, but more than make up for it with their quiet maturity and the ability to sit still for 45 whole minutes. They will never know how grateful I am for their presence. In the midst of a hellish lesson where nothing is going right, I see the light of understanding in their faces and realize to my amazement that I'm actually making sense to someone. Posing some general question to the class, I hear, through the cacophony and chaos, their in-the-right-ballpark answers, and I am touched and reassured. True, 85% of the class are lost in space, but I can't be that hopeless a teacher if somebody's getting it.

Burak comes back with another CD player. I plug it in and look for the CD. It isn't there. "Burak, did you take the CD out of the last player?" I ask him. His mouth drops open and he slaps his forehead and vanishes. Coskun and Hamit think this is hilarious. "Burak forget CD!" Coskun cries, pounding on his desk.

By the time Burak is back with the CD, the classroom noise is close to deafening and I don't even bother to pound on the table. I slide the CD into the player, press PLAY, and offer up a quiet but fervent prayer. But the CD gods are not with me: nothing happens.

Now Hamit and Coskun might as well be spectators at a circus. They guffaw and holler as they bounce up and down in their seats, clearly enjoying every minute of my misery. Suddenly I have an inspiration. I pull out the plug and insert it into the next socket. The CD player, tuned to RADIO blasts out a top-volume high-pitched screech of Arabesque, making us all jump out of our skins. Coskun roars and feigns anger. "Teacher!" he screams accusingly, covering his ears and pointing. "Noisy!" bellows Hamit, throwing up his hands in mock rage. Hypocrites.

Five minutes later, we're right in the middle of the listening exam revision and I accidentally jog the plug, resulting in the CD going right back to the beginning. The class roars in frustration: the listening test is all on one tract and we'll have to listen to the whole thing over again, each question repeated in maddening, carefully enunciated tones. It takes forever.

We take a much needed break during which I put my head on my desk and pray for the strength to go on.

"Teacher, can't hear!" Aycan wails ten minutes after the break. I'm thoroughly done in. I've weathered their rage over a mistake on the answer key and a couple of long, silly disputes about whether it's fair for them to know that scary and frightening mean the same thing and that careless is the opposite of careful. I'm exhausted and frazzled, but I want to encourage Aycan. Three months ago, she was one of the noisy, boisterous bunch and suddenly she's joined the quiet and attentive camp; I can see that she's starting to get it. God knows what happened, but now that it has, I want to keep it going. I push the CD player a little closer to her -- and manage to disconnect the plug from the socket yet again.

After this, try as I might, I can't get the class back under control. I bang on the table, I clap my hands, I raise my voice. The third time I start to explain what I'm going to do -- let the CD play at low volume in the background while we tackle the reading section until we get back to where we were in the listening exam -- Coskun interrupts me with a noisy, superfluous question -- "Teacher, what are you DOING?" -- and suddenly something inside me snaps and I lose it. Big-time.

It's as though I'm standing next to myself, another person entirely. I watch in awe as waves of sound bellow out of my mouth. "I HAVE HAD IT! I AM SICK AND TIRED OF YOUR CHILDISH NONSENSE! DON'T YOU GET THAT I'M TRYING TO HELP YOU? NOW, WILL YOU SHUT UP AND LISTEN? OR DO YOU SERIOUSLY WANT TO FAIL THIS CLASS AND STAY HERE ALL SUMMER LONG?" My eyes flash fire, my hands are clenched in fists, smoke is billowing from my nose and ears. I'm Moses brandishing the tablets. I'm God straight out of the Old Testament loosing the fateful lightning from my terrible swift sword.

Heads bow over test papers. Hands pick up pencils. Every single one of the students catches my drift even if they don't understand every nuance of my language. For the remainder of the class, everyone works in comparative silence. Nobody, me included, wants a repeat performance from Scary Mary.

As I dismiss the class, my heart breaks to see all my good students scurry out of the classroom, their eyes down. It's so unfair: they weren't to blame, but they got a good dose of my rage just the same.

I've got to start practicing my yoga breathing again. We've only got three more weeks until the end of term, but I'll need it. Not necessarily for teaching, but for the next time someone whines about lucky teachers and their three-month summer holidays.

Something To Write About

Monday morning. I walk into the classroom and pull out my blank attendance sheet. Up jump three students who are already there, three minutes early. They carefully place their journals on my desk, one by one, and give me shy smiles.

"Thank you!" I say, smiling back.

The door whips open and four more students come in. Each one of them pulls out a notebook and adds it to the pile on my desk. I blink: three minutes until class begins and I've already got seven journals on my desk. Whoa.

The door opens again and two more students come in. They greet me and add their notebooks to the pile. Nine.

I pull out my roll sheet and the door opens again. More students, with more completed journals. I have to work hard to keep my mouth shut, to keep the foolish smile off my face. Just as the class begins, I have a pile of sixteen journals on my desk. Sixteen! Before the class begins!

This is a huge first for me at this university. So much so that I give up trying to keep the foolish smile off my face and try not to laugh out loud instead. "Thank you," I whisper to the seventeenth student, a shy girl from Kazakhstan, who comes in late and actually apologizes as she places her notebook on the by now towering stack.

I've been teaching this exemplary class now for the past four weeks. Every week, I've had almost seventeen completed journals turned in on Monday. These kids are just unbelievable. They are motivated. They are eager. They are -- I swear it's true -- thirsty for knowledge.

They are fun, too, and international. In one class, I have students from Cyprus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Jordan, Ukraine, Dubai, Japan, and, as always, Turkey. In every single class I've taught before, trying to get the students to do pair or group work in English was like pulling hen's teeth. In this class, getting them to stop is the trick.

This Monday, the class goes swimmingly -- better than any class I've ever taught here. Students happily work together to sort out grammar problems. They compare their answers when I ask them to do it, correct each other in a courteous, cooperative way, and come to see me after class when they don't understand. There is only one niggling problem that lurks in the back of my mind as I move around the class answering questions and monitoring pair work: what in the world am I going to write about now? How am I going to be able to add to my collection of terrible teacher stories? Who wants to read about a class full of paragons who do their homework, come to class on time, and take every opportunity to increase their fund of knowledge?

There is, it turns out, one boy who comes in late and never brings his book, but his presence only reminds me of what I've been through here. When Cem swans through the door without pen, notebook or textbook, I smile indulgently to see the stunned, incredulous looks on his classmates' faces. They don't know it, but I had a whole class full of Cems before. I can handle a stray Cem just fine.

The class finishes. I tell everyone the homework assignment and there are no groans, sighs, or eye rollings. One girl helps me carry my seventeen notebooks up to the teachers' room. It'll take me hours to sort through this lot, but I'm not complaining.

My next class is God-awful. Four students come in late and haggle with me to mark them present. Only two boys have done their homework. Two girls huddle together over their mobile phones and I have to interrupt the class to confiscate them. Another girl comes in fifteen minutes late without her book, and strikes up a noisy conversation in Turkish with the two girls whose mobile phones I've confiscated. I catch another girl without her book copying another student's homework. Two girls are so far ahead of the rest of the class that they sit there, bored out of their minds, inspecting their fingernails. And I could go on, but you get the picture: it's not quite hell, but it's definitely purgatory.

But I don't mind: this purgatory will be followed by the heaven of that perfect class. And at least I'll have something to write about.

Double Standard

"Teacher, my journal!" Basir thumps a thick spiral notebook on my desk and smiles proudly. "I write."

I thumb through the pages and feel like groaning: he's just given me three months' worth of work in one go. "You were supposed to do this over the past three months," I tell him, frowning. "Why did it take you so long?"

Basir gives me a sad look. "Teacher, very, very busy."

"You've been too busy?"

He nods. The look on his face clearly says Isn't it obvious?

"For the past three months?"

He nods again.

Unlike some of my students, Basir doesn't have any kind of part-time job; I've asked. His only responsibility is to get to class on time four days a week, something he seldom manages to do. During my break, I stuff his journal into my locker with the half dozen other late journals I have in there. Maybe I'll have the time to mark it on the weekend.

When I go back to the classroom after my break, Basir frowns. "Teacher, where my journal?"

I look at him in amazement. "It's in my locker."

"You control?" (Turkish students use 'control' to mean 'mark'.)

"How could I possibly have marked it? You just gave it to me!"

Basir actually has the gall to look disappointed. He's always the first out of the classroom at break time and the last one to come back. He spends his break outside, smoking cigarettes and horsing around with his friends, but he obviously expects me to spend mine marking his overdue journal.

In the next class, Özge gives me a dirty look when I get her name wrong. "Teacher, what is my name?" she asks me, eyes flashing accusingly.

I chew my lower lip and wrack my tired old brain. "Özge," I say finally.

"You forget!"

By great effort, I manage to resist rolling my eyes. I forget my own kids' names half the time, but I can't expect Özge to know that. Or believe it, for that matter.

"I remember your name!" she persists. It's true, she does. Too bad she never remembers to use the past simple in the right place, but reminding her of that would be snarky.

Instead of answering her, I walk over to the board. I draw six black lines. "This is how many classes I teach here," I tell Özge. Then I write '30' next to each line, followed by 30 x 6 = I raise my eyebrows at her. "Thirty times six is...?"

She wrinkles her nose. "One-eight-zero."

I nod and print out 180 in large black numbers. "That's how many students I teach," I tell her, just in case she hasn't made the connection. "So...how many teachers do you have?"

"Two," she says, narrowing her eyes.

I spread my arms. "If I only had two students, I'd remember your names every single time." This is a lie actually. I only have two kids and I get their names mixed up every other day. But Özge doesn't need to know that.

Over the weekend, I really am busy. I've got our foster daughter coming home for the holidays and I have to launder her bedding, clean her room, and arrange for someone to pick her up from the airport. My husband catches a bad cold and our Eldest decides she will be coming home for Christmas too, but not on the same flight as her foster sister, so a ride has to be arranged for her too. There are meals to fix and Christmas presents to buy and a house to take care of. There is a kitten to chase after and a dozen letters to write and those one hundred and eighty students, after all. So I don't get around to marking Basir's journal over the weekend, and he cannot get over this. "Where my journal?" he asks me.

"I'm sorry, but I haven't had a chance to mark it yet."

"Why not?"

"I've been very busy."

I don't get around to marking it all week and he asks me about it every single day, sometimes more than once. Never mind that it took him three months to get around to writing it, the fact that I haven't marked it over the course of an entire week fills him with righteous indignation.

I get Özge's name wrong three times and I mispronounce it too. She pouts and shakes her head at me. She's obviously forgotten my little lecture on 180 vs 2.

Özge wants to be an architect and Basir is aiming for the engineering department. Too bad neither of them is going to be a teacher, but with any luck, some day they'll be parents.

Rage Against The Machines

When I was sixteen, I had to take a multiple choice test on mechanical reasoning. This was a trial of a new exam, our class was told, and we should not worry about our results: the examining board just wanted to get an idea of our mechanical aptitude. There were diagrams and illustrations depicting screws, levers, rotating belts, pulleys, widgets and gizmos in various machines with arrows pointing up, down, clockwise and counter-clockwise.

I sweated blood over that exam. I chewed my pencil down to a stub and wracked my brains over every single question, finally turning it in with a sigh of relief.

When we got back our results, I immediately put my paper away so that no one would see it: my score was 15%. The principal actually called me into his office over it. He wasn't upset, he quickly assured me; I wasn't in trouble. But how could I get only 15% right? Had I felt ill when I took the test? I blushed and shook my head. Well then, maybe I'd gotten mixed up; maybe I'd thought number 3 was number 4, say, and just carried on, making mistake after mistake? I shrugged. Maybe. The principal stared at me and frowned; he couldn't figure it out. It wasn't statistically possible for someone to get only 15% right. And it was very strange, considering how good most of my other results were. In fact, he went on, I was the only student in the entire school with such a great discrepancy between verbal skills and mechanical ability.

I let the principal think that I might have gotten mixed up and filled in the wrong answers. It was easier than answering any more questions. The truth, I suspect, is that the part of my brain where mechanical reasoning skills should be isn't just a yawning, cavernous blank, it's a carnival house of distorted mirrors where everything is twisted up and put in the wrong way around. It's like I have some mechanical dyslexia that makes me muddle everything up. And it isn't dependable either. It's not as though left is right and right is left: some days counterclockwise is clockwise, but others it might be straight down in a corkscrew fashion.

Fortunately, life isn't all about machines. I've coped through pretty well with my disability. I've mastered the rudiments of bicycle, typewriter, copy machine -- even automobile. In my life-after-children, I've actually figured out how to use a mobile phone and a laptop. And I'm a teacher, not a mechanical engineer: as long as I can operate a Xerox, pop a video into a machine, produce sound on a CD player, print out worksheets on a computer, I'm home free, right?

If only! A few years back, our school purchased what they call smart boards. These are essentially huge vertical laptops with a king-sized pen (really a 'mouse') that the teacher can whisk all over the board, or screen, to do all sorts of clever things. No longer do you have to stand at the blackboard, patiently writing out sentences with an aching arm, breathing in chalk dust. No more filling up board markers with messy ink, no more brushing up against whiteboards and ruining your clothes.

But smart boards fill me with terror. When I use my own laptop, only my family is around to witness my screw ups. When you teach with a smart board, you've got a whole room full of kids to witness what you do. Kids, I might add, who are a lot more computer savvy than I am. Who are bound to sit there, watching me flounder about and think smart board, dumb teacher. And no matter what anyone tells me, I know that smart boards are not problem-free. Just as computers have made the writing process far more convenient, so do they bring a near-infinite supply of headaches. No one will convince me that smart boards aren't just the same: even technologically savvy teachers tell tales of breakdowns, blackouts, and weird glitches they can't figure out, and I've heard them. The same goes for using laptops with projectors and speakers: sure teachers can do plenty with them, but is it worth all the hassle? I remain unconvinced.

So I breathed a huge sigh of relief when the smart boards were assigned to a chosen few (i.e. young) teachers and we old-fashioned types were allowed to use the classrooms with whiteboards. I breathed another sigh of relief when I knew that I wouldn't have to teach the class that is using DVDs.

Then they went and changed our schedules. Why do they do that?

Last week, I was handed a DVD and a book. I was given a laptop, a projector, a pair of speakers, an extension cable, and a whole crap-load of nasty things to connect bits to other bits. A kindly colleague helped me haul it all down and showed me how to set up. It didn't work, so she got another teacher to help us. Between the two of them, they finally got it working while I watched in horrified bemusement.

The class was like something out of hell. Even with all the blinds closed and the lights off, it was too bright for us to see what was going on. We ended up having to project the image on the wall opposite the whiteboard, and as all the chairs are bolted down, students had to swivel around and strain their necks to see. The sound was distorted and out of sync with the actors' lips. Every time I tried to pause the DVD to ask a question, I ended up turning off the whole thing. There were so many twisty, tangly bits of cable running all over the place that I ended up tripping on one and disconnecting the entire system. A student knocked over the projector when he got up to put something in the bin. The only thing the class managed to learn was that their teacher can't operate a laptop without swearing, which segues nicely into the only vocabulary I ended up teaching them. Everybody went out of class saying death, hell and poison. And worse.

The second class was just as bad. The third class -- the third class I don't want to talk about.

I have two more months of this, three days a week. Hell couldn't be much worse.

A friend once told me about a colleague of hers who taught in Bhutan. His classroom was in a cave. There was one blackboard, a carefully hoarded supply of chalk, and clean drinking water. Sounds ideal, doesn't it?

I wonder if there are any openings?

When The Saints Go Marching In

Ten minutes into the lesson and I've finally managed to take attendance.

"Teacher, what page?" asks a girl in the front row.

"Page thirty-three," I repeat through gritted teeth. "Page thirty-three."

The door whips open and Ender breezes in, reeking of tobacco and aftershave. "Hello teacher. Sorry for late." He looks pointedly at the attendance sheet lying on my desk. "I am here?"

"Teacher, what page?" yells a boy in the middle of the classroom who wasn't paying attention earlier.

"THIRTY THREE!"

Ender is still standing there. Barely glancing at him, I jerk a thumb towards the desks in a sit down gesture. This sails over Ender's head. He takes a step closer and gestures at the attendance sheet. "I am present?"

"You are late. Sit down!"

He doesn't sit down, though. If he knew me a little better, he really would, but he stands there, waiting for me to stop what I'm doing and mark him present.

"You are late, and I am trying to teach," I say, my voice dangerously soft and low. "Now sit down."

"Teacher, page forty three?" a girl calls out.

"THIRTY THREE! I bellow.

Ender still hasn't given up. He jabs his thumb at the roll sheet. "I am present?"

God give me strength! Ender is the third student who's come into my classroom late this morning. My patience stores, dangerously low even before Ender made his ill-timed appearance, are suddenly empty. I pick the register up in both hands and raise it over my head in a fair imitation of Moses ready to smash the tablets. "SIT.DOWN!" I thunder, making the entire class jump.

Students in my morning class tend to come in late because the bus service is erratic. I'd be more sympathetic if I hadn't spotted a few of the offenders outside, indulging in pre-class cigarettes. When it comes to the bus being late, wolf has been cried one time too many. I've gotten hardened after over a year here, and I've grown canny too: Ender is unmistakably one of the wolf criers. Maybe his bus was late. Maybe it was raining/hailing/windy where he lives or his lift didn't show up. Maybe his roommate stole his bicycle. Maybe he has a 104 degree temperature from swine flu, but I don't care. Everybody else managed to get here on time. Ender is on two legs; he looks more well-rested than I do, and he smells like he's spent the last three days smoking in a closet. Nothing short of, God forbid, a dead mother with an authentic, carefully-vetted death certificate is going to change my mind: I'm not marking Ender present. The midterm exam is this coming Wednesday, and my class is lagging far behind. I was hoping to use this period to catch up, but Ender has gone and made me waste five precious minutes.

Amazingly, Ender doesn't leave the classroom once he knows I'm not going to mark him present. Finally getting the point, he stomps down the aisle, throws himself into a chair and lands on his back, legs splayed in front of him, his face like thunder.

"Now open your books to page thirty three," I say quietly. And Ender does. The rest of the class are watching me narrowly, their faces full of awe. In fact, I'm full of awe myself.

How in the world did I get like this? I am the mildest mannered person you could ever meet. I hate confrontations; I will bend over backward to accommodate people; I am gentle by nature and utterly trusting. How did I become this shrill, cynical woman who bullies students into doing their homework, patrols her classroom for slackers, and wrests cell phones from the hands of teenagers? I've gone through an amazing transformation in one year's time.

For the next two hours, I work the kids like there is no tomorrow. I push them willy-nilly through the present perfect tense; I make sure they've got a handle on already, just, and yet; I drill them on Have you ever...?; I give no quarter and accept no excuses and I do not allow them a minute's peace. The deserving are praised, the lazy ones are admonished, and the confused are gently led to the light. I make sure that all of them participate and contribute, even Ender. And we get through all the material, by God. We are now only two chapters behind, and I know I'll be able to cover them on Monday and Tuesday. When I finally dismiss the class, they get up from their seats with glazed looks on their faces; they squeeze their eyes shut and rub their faces and the backs of their necks. I think they may be even more tired than I am.

The truth is, I don't know whether they'll pass the midterm. But this I do know: on the seventh day I will rest. And if there really is a heaven, I'm that much closer to securing myself a spot.

The Devil You Know

"Are you sure you aren't supposed to be doing academic skills?" My voice sounds awfully feeble and wimpy.

A sea of faces stares back at me -- or at least the ones that are actually turned my way. A full quarter of this strange class isn't paying the slightest bit of attention to me. Half of the kids who aren't yakking away shake their heads.

I hold up the book. "But you do have this book?"

"No book!" they practically chorus.

This is a real blow. "You don't have the book?"

More frowns and wiggled heads.

I'm beginning to panic now, so I hold the book high and walk down the aisle. "Does anyone have this book?" I roar at the top of my lungs. Foreheads furrow and lines appear between eyebrows.

"Nobody has this book?" I'm just buying time now. I'm covering for a colleague who has the same horrible flu I have barely just recovered from myself. And I've wasted the last thirty minutes hurriedly planning a lesson that isn't going to happen.

No one, it turns out, has the academic skills book. Not even the keenest, most conscientious, straight arrow among them will admit to having the academic skills book. It's hot outside and the air-conditioner isn't doing its job; I feel sweat beading up on my forehead.

"But you do have your course books, right?"

They all nod. Thank God!

"Okay, hang on and I'll go get mine."

Fortunately the teachers' room is just a mad dash across the corridor. I rummage through my locker with growing panic: my course book is gone! I have a vague memory of someone asking to borrow it earlier. Whimpering, I go skidding into the coordinators' office for a course book, then hurry back to the classroom to take roll.

Good thing I'm back: they're really starting to get restless now. I have to shout to get their attention.

But there is fresh hell: the roll sheet I've been given is not the current one and half a dozen students seem to have been added to the class list. By the time I've cobbled together an attendance record of sorts and dealt with thirty-five strange Turkish names, I'm exhausted. I've had six students spell their names for me and not one of these kids knew the difference between 'e' and 'i' -- in Turkish 'e' is pronounced as eh, while 'i' is pronounced as ee -- so we spent too much time on that. Sure, they'll thank me some day, especially if they ever have to make a phone call in the middle of Grand Central Station and are required to spell their names, but now they're just hot and pissed off.

As I start in on my teaching point, my eagle eye lights on a boy in the back row who seems to be talking. I narrow my eyes: he's holding a newspaper. For the benefit of the class, I point at the offender and mime horrified shock, then make my way towards him slowly, rolling my eyes at the rest of the class. The boy is so busy talking, he doesn't spot me until I whip the paper out of his hands. Everyone else in class is enjoying this too much to spoil the fun.

I don't even have to look at the paper to know that it's in Turkish, but I go through the motions anyway, just for the heck of it. "You're reading a Turkish newspaper," I point out. The boy nods sheepishly. "Although this is an English class." He nods again, trying to smile. I sigh and shake my head. The newspaper goes into the trash; he's lucky I don't rip it in half first. Newspaper boy and his friend are assigned new seats in front where I can keep an eye on them. They blush and drag their feet, but at least they do what I ask.

Now there are only twenty minutes of class time left.

The lesson -- following contextual clues in reading -- isn't an easy one and requires much more preparation time than we have. The class is a typical mixture of keen-as-mustard and don't-give-a-damn. I'd say the ratio was about 1/10. By the time the class is over I have yelled myself hoarse, confiscated five mobile phones and a magazine, and reseated three more kids. I feel like a marginally overpaid babysitter. Are the kids in my class this awful? They can't be -- can they? At the very least, none of my regulars has read a Turkish newspaper in class. Yet.

As I walk out the door, one of my own students, a great, swaggering, sloppy boy who gives me no end of trouble, sees me in the corridor. His face lights up. "Hello Mary Teacher!"

I've told him two dozen times not to call me Mary Teacher. But what the heck, he still looks great.

Getting In Touch

It's that time of year again. All the tests have been taken, all our marks have been turned in, and the final grades have been posted. Tears have been shed too -- tears of joy and tears of bitter disappointment. I have been hugged, begged, thanked, kissed, harangued, and cried upon.

From the staffroom window, I see one of my students showing her parents around the campus. Her mother exclaims at the pretty flowering trees, the fountain-pool. They pose for photographs, the proud father changing places with the mother as they take turns snapping photos. They put their arms around their daughter and smile. I share their sense of achievement.

In the corridor, one of her classmates still sits in stunned outrage. I've done my best to console her, but it hasn't worked. Never mind that she wouldn't be failing if she'd put in a little more effort, I still feel bad. She will be calling her parents later, telling them the bad news. I share their disappointment too.

I know I did my best, but sometimes I wonder how effective I've been. Sometimes I wish to God I could reach these students, who seem to live in some parallel universe to mine.

In the bathroom, I overhear a conversation in English between two students who sound West African.

"Ooh," one girl laments, "jooost look at all this fat on me! I am so ashaaamed!"

Her friend snorts. "What fat? I don't see fat."

"Look," insists the first girl, "look at this here, you see? This greeeat roll of fat." I can hear the pout in her voice.

Her friend snorts all the louder. "Geeet out."

"I have to lose this fat!"

"GEEET OUT, you do not!"

I've been lurking in the toilet, but now I've got to see these girls. I've got to see with my own eyes just how fat the complaining girl is.

Two sets of brown eyes flit over me as I come out. Both girls are stick thin, in skirts so short I want to throw a sheet over them. Despite their skinniness, they are also curvy and drop-dead beautiful and if there's an ounce of fat on either of them, only a determined anorexic could find it. I hope to God the girl who thinks she's fat is just belly-aching. I'd like to tell her to go pig out on ice cream -- that life is too short to angst about weight, but she wouldn't listen to a random middle-aged woman. A random middle-aged teacher. We live in separate worlds, these girls and I.

The girls freshen up their lipstick and pat their perfect hair with manicured fingers. They leave the bathroom in a fog of body spray, clattering on high heels. Ah well, I'm glad that at least one of them has some sense in her.

Before I can leave, the door slams open again and another girl hurries inside. She is in tears. She grips the side of the sink and leans over it, sobbing. I wash my hands slowly, embarrassed to be witnessing her misery. I don't know what to do as she dabs helplessly at her tear-stained reddened eyes and nose; she must be mortified that a strange woman is in here with her. I ought to leave and let her cry in peace.

But I just can't do this. There's something about the way this girl cries that reminds me of my own daughters, as toddlers. She seems on the verge of getting over her grief, and then new waves of misery wash over her and she bursts into fresh tears.

"Are you okay?" I ask as gently as possible and she squeezes her lips together and tries to nod, but her face crumples and more tears slip out.

Suddenly, I can't stand it. I open my arms, the way I used to do when my own little girls were in tears. And to my amazement, this girl steps right into them. She accepts my hug, letting me pat her back and offer her mindless "There, theres". For a brief time, she even stops crying. When I say goodbye, she even gives me a tremulous smile.

My inner mother hen is thrilled. Finally I've reached one of them.

Choosing The Winners: From The Ridiculous To The Sublime

My daughters are teaching me how to embed YouTube clips. They've shown me how to do this before, but I'm not the world's swiftest learner, and to be honest, they're not always the world's most patient teachers, but boy, have they made great strides: no one has yelled at me once and we've spent a good fifteen minutes on it! And lucky me: I've been able to let my pesky WIP sit for a few hours. And I have found yet another way to procrastinate, so I can give the FreeRice site a little break.

As a teacher of basic English, the decisions I have to make are sometimes heartbreaking. By giving -- or withholding -- a point or two, I can either mess up someone's summer plans or make them the world's happiest kid. Although the results are the main thing, sometimes there are other factors that come into play: how hard the kid tried, whether or not s/he has a part-time job, how good the student's attendance was -- and, damn it -- punctuality.

It's not easy. Most of the material I have to grade is of a very basic level. Here is just a little taste:

My Best Friend (Serhat)

I'm happy to meet Onur. Because He is friendly always. He is shy boy but also He is extrovert. sometimes I feel myself alone. Always I want together. I hope we don't leave never and I hope our friendship are going to until endless.

My Best Friend (Mehmet)

My Best Friend Ahmet is quite and friendly boy. He is liked by everybody. Because he He is gentleman. Sometimes His working too much and everybody is liking him. His family is quite poor. But his family is gentleman. He is quite fat. But everybody look his by ripe person.

Which one of those two would, in your opinion, rate the higher points? Would it really not matter to you if you knew that one of the students came from a very poor family and had to work at a part-time job? As it happens, both of these students are boys, but what if you knew that one was a girl whose parents refused to pay for her university education?

Do you see the kind of dilemmas I am faced with here?

Now, for what it is worth, here are two clips of the performances of two talented young men. After listening to these several times, I thank God that I teach bonehead English and don't work as a musical critic.

Haochen Zhang of China





Nobuyuki Tsujii of Japan




If any of my readers can tell me definitively which one of these musicians is better -- and why -- I will be enormously grateful.

Crime And Punishment

When I was a child, I knew from its name that the most beautiful country in the world had to be Czechoslovakia. In fact, given its name, I secretly didn't even care if it wasn't beautiful. I was heartbroken when Czechoslovakia got divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia -- what a shame to break up that beautiful name! How sad that only one side got to keep the Z! -- but then the Soviet Union got broken up into so many wonderful new places, all with wonderfully exotic names.

Like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Lucky me: every term, we get a handful of students from former Soviet bloc republics, such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and they have proven to be even more interesting than the names of their countries. First of all, though a handful of them are ethnically Russian, most of them look Asian. Some of them are astonishingly exotic. When I walked into one class for the first time, I saw a red-headed boy with skin far whiter than mine, scribbling away. When he looked up, I did a double take: his face was entirely Asian, but his eyes were a bright cornflower blue. The fact that most of these students are bilingual in their own language and Russian makes them all the more fascinating.

As a general rule, the Kazakhstani and Kyrgyzstani students have also had better English language skills than the average Turkish student. My first week here, I had to monitor a test. As I strolled around the classroom, I could see that the 'stan' students were tackling the writing component of their exam with gusto while almost all of the Turkish students were making heavy work of it. After the test, one of the Kazakh students approached the desk. "Can I ask you a question?" His pronunciation and intonation were a little stilted, but near native.

"Sure."

"Well, foolishly, I neglected to allocate enough time to filling in the last part of the writing section. I know that the examination is finished, but I was wondering if you might allow me --"

My chin had dropped at neglected and my eyes had popped at allocated. I held out a hand to stop him. "Forget it."

The boy's face fell, so I leaned closer. "Take it from me, if you can say that much, you've already passed." And he had: even with the missing reading questions, he'd scored 92%. Some of these students are so good they finish the placement exam in one quarter the allocated time, scoring close to 100%. And like the West African students, the tiny minority who screw up and fail end up being our high fliers.

But of course there are exceptions. Like Karim.

Karim looked so much like my Japanese students, it was uncanny. He even acted like them: he was bashful and hardly ever talked in class. Because he never talked, it was hard to know what his level was -- or what was on his mind. When he turned in his journal, though, I was astounded: all the words he never got out in class were there, penned in the beautiful, meticulous copperplate these students have all been taught. The first paragraph made me sit up straight:

Although I was exhausted from attending lessons all week, my rooms were not clean, so I spent some time in tidying and sweeping. I dislike such domestic chores because I am not used to performing them, but I realize that these things are necessary if one is to live alone.


I was so astonished by this entry, I caught Karim after the next class. "Did you really write this?" He shyly nodded and I shook my head: like my Japanese students, he was even humble!

His next week's entry was even better:

Unfortunately, I caught influenza and was forced to go to the doctor, who prescribed some medication for me as I had a high temperature.

This almost made me swoon: Karim was able to use relative clauses!

After taking the medication, I rested in my room. Truly, I missed my mother's wonderful care and attention. I reflected to myself that it was a real misfortune to have fallen ill in a foreign country where I must look after myself.

This did make me swoon. Long, flowing sentences that were a pleasure to read! More relative clauses and three-syllable words! Why in the world had this kid failed his preliminary examination?

When I talked to one of my colleagues about Karim, she shrugged. "He's a repeat student, you know. I had him in my class last term. He never turned in his homework and hardly ever came to class."

I was amazed: Karim was repeating the course with English this good? But in fact, he seemed to miss a lot of my classes too. When I called him on this, he smiled shyly and handed me his next journal entry:

On Saturday, my good friend Shukrat came to visit me from my country. He and I hoped to find some amusement, so we went out in the evening to pass the time together. We happened to find a place to drink and remained there for a long time. My friend and I talked until the early morning hours, remembering the happy times we spent together in our own country. The next day, we went to the beach and ate a picnic lunch we had prepared.

Well, no wonder Karim had gotten so brown. I smiled and shook my head at the phrase ...picnic we had prepared: Karim even knew how to use the past perfect correctly! I couldn't wait to see how high he would score in the midterm.

To my utter amazement, Karim failed to show up for the midterm. When I asked him what had happened, he gave me another shy smile and a shrug. "Overslept."

"How could you oversleep when you had a test?" I wailed. Frankly, I'd been counting on Karim to bump up the class average.

Karim squirmed and looked contrite. I couldn't help notice that he was even more tanned, as though he'd spent a whole week outdoors.

It wasn't until I gave the class their first pop quiz that I finally figured it out.

Karim squirmed in his seat and chewed his lower lip as he stared at his paper. He seemed to grow even darker as I observed him, as though he was blushing under his tan. I misunderstood his nervousness: Karim hadn't been on the castle field trip like the rest of the class and I assumed he was worried he wouldn't get credit. "Don't worry," I told him. "Write about some historical place you've been to in your own country and I won't mark you down."

When he turned in his paper, it was surprisingly short, and Karim couldn't quite look me in the eye. In the staffroom, my face fell as I read the following: It isin AlmatyCityCentral Museum a veryPerfect location in city Centre. It has all history about Kazakhstan I ashamed, but it is fat I don't know history of the Museum I liked Museum because after visit I feeling very good. I like Museum because I can know history of the Kazakhstan Museum the beautiful place I loved it.

The copperplate was shaky too.

I found Karim outside with a group of his Kazakh friends. "Whose diary is this?" I asked as Karim reached for it. One of the boys giggled.

"Seriously," I said, "which one of you guys is Doystoevsky? Because I know it's not Karim here."

One of the boys burst out laughing and elbowed Karim in the ribs. And now he did blush. I handed him the journal.

"The only reason you guys got away with this," I hissed, "wasn't because you were smart, but because I was stupid." I turned to address Karim's pals. "Next time, dumb it down a little and you might fool someone." Then I swung around and narrowed my eyes at Karim. "Or better yet, stay away from the beach and do your own damn homework for a change!"

Looks like Karim will be repeating the course in summer school. No more trips to the beach for my young Raskolnikov.

Pressing A Point

I'm only a few feet way from the vending machine when I hear footsteps behind me on the marble floor. Wheeling around, I see three of my students standing there with worried looks on their faces. "Hojam," the bravest one of them says very respectfully.

"Yes?"

Ahmet clears his throat as the other two all but push him forward. Poor Ahmet: his English is no great shakes, but he's a lot more fluent than Alper or Ilker. He's obviously been voted the designated speaker here.

"Why Alper and Ilker didn't get extra points?" he asks breathlessly, cutting to the chase.

Extra points are given at the end of the term for excellent attendance, a real consideration at time when a few extra points can mean the difference between pass and fail. They ought to know this, too: I've been reciting it in their class like a mantra for the past two weeks. Alper and Ilker lick their lips, their eyes flicking from Ahmet to me.

"Because they missed a lot of classes." Duh.

They make a brief stab at protesting, but in the end they have the good grace to accept this: after all, I've got attendance sheets to back me up. But Ahmet isn't finished.

"Why they didn't get points for composition?"

Alper and Ilker narrow their eyes and move a little closer.

"Because they copied." Frowning, I turn to Alper and Ilker. "And I warned you many times that if you copied, I'd give you zero points."

"No, hojam! No copy, I swear!" puts in Ilker, his dark eyes flashing.

"Ilker, you copied. You wrote the same thing a lot of other people wrote -- the exact same words." I look longingly at the vending machine. The water cooler in the teachers' room is empty again, and it's hot. The boys don't see this: those elusive extra points are the only things on their minds at this moment and even if they knew how thirsty I am I doubt they'd care.

"No copy," Alper protests weakly, but his eyes are shifty and there's a look on his face somewhere between pain and amusement.

I take a deep breath: I'm going to play the religion card. "You boys go to mosque every Friday, don't you?" They'd better go: they've missed enough of my late Friday afternoon classes on this pretext.

Ahmet nods. "Yes."

I'm prepared to believe him. Not only does he appear to bathe regularly, he turns in his homework on time, pays attention in class, and obviously irons his cotton shirts. Ilker and Alper nod too, but they're a hair behind Ahmet and they won't quite meet my eye. They watch furtively as someone feeds coins into the vending machine and a can comes rattling out.

"So you know how important it is not to lie, right?"

They give me sullen looks: they see where this is going.

I'm beginning to hate myself a little, but I'm sick and tired of students niggling over the extra points they have not earned. I'm also over-the-top tired of the plagiarism issue -- and I'm thirsty -- so I press on. "Well, when it comes to students copying, it's impossible to fool teachers because we always know. We're a little like God." I point up to the ceiling and three pairs of eyes follow my finger. "So don't copy from now on, okay?"

They heave deep sighs and nod.

Finally, they leave me, shoulders slumped, heads down in defeat.

Feeling an ungodly thirst, I go to the vending machine, hoping there will be a can left.

Sweating It Out

Mert sits in the back of the class, against the wall. The classroom seats are in long rows, bolted to the floor. The rows are close together too, making it impossible for me to check the work of wallflowers like Mert. It's no puzzle why he sits there: he rarely comes to class and he will do anything to get out of speaking, reading, or writing English.

Today, he is present for the first time in ages and he looks nervous. Small wonder: we're less than two weeks away from the final examination and Mert's chances don't look good; apart from his lousy attendance, he blew the midterm. The one example of homework I have from him is, to say the very least, not stellar.

During the break, I collar Mert before he can sneak out the door for a smoke. "Are you okay?"

Mert still has the deer-frozen-in-headlights look all the other students lost after the first few weeks. Unlike the others, he's never gotten used to the idea of a non-Turkish-speaking foreign teacher. His jaw drops now and he stares at me, stricken, unable to answer.

"Are you feeling well?"

"No," he hisses. "I am illy."

"You're ill?"

Mert's mouth remains open. "You're ill," he affirms, and I try not to sigh.

"Is that why you were sleeping in class?"

His jaw drops again. Another student translates my question and Mert shakes his head. He's not sick now, it seems; he was ill last night, but now he is better. Since I have an obliging translator, I take the liberty of grilling Mert a little further. "You've missed a lot of classes. Were you ill for two months?"

He nods. Before he can go on, however, our interpreter leaves and Mert is forced to finish on his own. Mert doesn't call me tee-cha; he calls me hojam, the Turkish equivalent. Squeezing his eyes shut, he finally comes up with an answer. "Hojam, Turkey."

"You were in Turkey?"

His head bobs up and down.

"For almost two months?"

More nodding.

"Why?"

All of a sudden I notice that Mert has begun to sweat. His upper lip has a thin glaze over it and beads of sweat are collecting on his high, pale forehead. Even as we stand there, the drops of perspiration seem to join up and double in size. A large drop loses its hold on his temple and begins to trickle down the side of his face.

He swallows painfully. "Hojam, mother. Illy."

"Your mother is ill?" Boy, am I getting tired of 20 questions!

"Yes!"

This is awful. If he's telling the truth, this poor kid deserves all the sympathy I have. If he's bluffing, how dare he come up with a lie like this?

"What is wrong with your mother?"

Now Mert is visibly shaking. If there's any time left after this, he's really going to need that smoke!

"Hojam, greep."

Good thing I've taken French. Let's see...grippe must mean flu.

"Influenza?"

He's got a packet of Kleenex out now, and it's about time: the sweat is running down his neck in rivulets. A drop quivers on the end of his nose. He hastily wipes it off. "Yes," he almost whispers.

"Your mother has had influenza for two months?" I can't keep the incredulous tone out of my voice.

He nods.

"Is she in the hospital?" Fortunately, I know the Turkish word for this, so I use it. I have to.

Now Mert really does look ill. He is so pale that I can see the blue veins throbbing in the side of his head, still slick with a sheen of sweat. Edging away from me, he licks his lips. He knows he's backed himself into a corner: any mother who's had the flu for two months ought to be in the hospital. He starts to shake his head, edging away from me, his hand automatically going to his shirt pocket where he has his cigarette pack. His eyes are filled with desperation and misery.

I give up and let him go. It's just not worth it, subjecting a kid so disinclined to learn to this sort of torment.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with his mother -- I'll bet you a hundred dollars. But I almost wish she'd give up on Mert's English too.

They'll Never Know

Ilker sidles up to me, eyes shifty, like I'm a drug dealer and he's shaky for a fix. "Tee-cha, when pop quiz?"

I try not to sigh. "You know I can't tell you that! It's a pop quiz. That means no one knows when it will be." I crane my neck, trying to look past him. "The others are still in the dungeon," I say meaningfully, hoping he'll get my gist.

But no such luck.

Instead, he moves closer, regarding me intently. "Tomorrow?"

"Look, I don't know." I give him a stern look. "And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you. Now go back and finish the tour of the castle!"

"What we have to write?"

I give in and let out a long sigh. "You know I can't tell you that either!"

"History of castle? Peoples live in castle?"

"Maybe." Shrugging, I look up at the sky. It is a brilliant, beautiful blue, not a cloud in sight, if you don't count Ilker.

He all but wrings his hands. "Pleeeease!"

He won't believe me, but I really don't know. The powers that be don't tell us: they're suspicious our students will winkle it out of us. The powers that be know that our students feel about writing the same way Superman feels about Kryptonite.

Three days later it happens: we teachers are given the three questions the students have to answer about their field trip to our local castle. I announce the pop quiz and write the questions on the board. The class absorbs them in stunned silence:

1) Describe the castle's location.

2) Describe the history of the castle, and some of the castle's features.

3) What did you like or dislike about your visit to the castle?


Now I am sick and tired of my students copying things off the internet and trying to pass them off as their own work, so I read them the riot act on this. I write PLAGIARISM on the board in 3-inch letters. I tell them loudly and clearly that even one copied sentence will earn them a zero grade -- for the slower ones, I demonstrate this by writing two identical sentences on the board with an X through them and a big frowning face -- and I repeat the whole spiel for good measure.

And when I collect their papers, here is the very first one I see:

1) XX Castle is situated in the southern section of YY City and is a stunning backdrop to the harbor.

2) Largely built during the Hellenistic-Roman period the castle is thought to date back to the eighth century B.C. It is likely that the castle was built to defend the city from Arab raids. With its horseshoe-shaped main tower, Byzantium style of fortification, and embrasures for archery defense, the castle is a unique example of its type.

3) I very think XX Castle small so small room and very bad Dungeons because it's have got a poor people but Very beatifull view very beatiful tours.

A quick glance confirms my worst fears: I've got half a dozen more almost exactly like it

I just manage to collar one of the plagiarists before he leaves the classroom.

"Alper, you did not write this." It's hard to keep the rage out of my voice.

He is all injured protestations, his voice an indignant whine. "No, tee-cha, I write!"

I suck in my breath and pull out a pen. "Okay," I hiss, pointing to my notebook. "Show me. Write me just one sentence now."

He takes the pen with a show of bravado and goes through the motions, but all he can produce is XX Castle is before he puts down the pen with a weak smile. "Tee-cha, how you know?"

I shake my head and snap the notebook shut. "Zero points!"

"How you know I don't write?" he asks again. I give in: I roll my eyes so hard it almost counts as aerobic exercise.

But I don't even bother to answer: if he has to ask, he'll never know.

Preaching To The Converted

It is a beautiful, sparkling spring day. The university gardeners have just turned on the sprinklers which are making a refreshing tsk-tsk-tsk sound as the water sprays out in crystalline arcs; the mimosa trees are in full bloom, drooping branches groaning under their weight of tiny yellow flowers, the ground beneath them already speckled a bright gold. The temperature is just right, the grass is as green as grass gets, every flower shines like a jewel. But nothing's perfect: the boy and girl in front of me, two stylishly dressed teenagers who have Spoiled Rich Kids practically written all over them, have stopped to light up cigarettes. Even as I watch, the boy takes the empty cigarette pack and throws it over a low wall, right into the middle of the perfectly landscaped university gardens. It lands in a lantana bush and sits there, garish and ugly, among clusters of multi-colored blossoms.

And nobody bats an eye. Nobody runs up to him, outraged and red-faced, demanding that he go back and pick up his piece of trash. He and his elegantly coiffured girlfriend continue their stroll, flicking ash and blowing out smoke.

If I were the Jolly Green Giant, I would grab this boy by his ankles, dangle him over his discarded cigarette pack, and make him eat it. While I was at it, I'd warn his girlfriend to keep a sharp eye on him. I'd be tempted to tell her to go easy on the make-up and not to wear such form-fitting pants too. But I'm a middle-aged teacher who can't get her own teenagers to keep their rooms tidy, so I just walk by, thinking disapproving thoughts.

But this stays in my mind. The beautiful day, the rolling green grass, the scent of lemon blossom drifting across the sun-warmed campus -- all of these are lost to me now as I remember this thoughtless action. The careless way the boy did it showed how little it meant to him. It was one of those tiny things you do so often, you don't even think about -- an automatic reflex, like shifting gears or pouring another cup of coffee. I'll bet if I'd said anything about it, he'd have been surprised.

By the time I've entered my classroom, I'm full of righteous indignation. What if these kids do, by some miracle, manage to graduate, complete their degrees, and enter the World? What then? What if, say, that cigarette pack flinger becomes the owner of a construction company? Do you think a kid who flings his cigarette pack without a by-your-leave is going to think twice about dumping old building materials? What if he is ever in charge of a factory that uses toxic chemicals? So what if all I teach these kids is English; they've GOT to learn that tossing their junk around is wrong.

As it happens, the classroom is in its typical dire state. Some idiot has put a bottle of coke in the waste bin without making sure the lid was on tight; the waste bin is not lined. A quick look around the classroom shows me the usual detritus: shredded paper on the floor, scattered candy wrappers, empty or half-filled water bottles on half a dozen tables, balled-up Kleenexes peeping out of every corner. And it isn't just the students, either: once again the last teacher hasn't bothered to erase the board: every square inch of it is covered with squiggles, figures, diagrams and fulsome explanations in Turkish. Noting my reaction, Özgür and Ahmet -- two of my best students -- leap to erase it, but I wave them back down.

After I've erased the board, I give my students a little lecture. Using easy words. I describe how important it is to clean up after yourself, how anyone can make a difference just by doing their own bit. I point out how irritating it is to have a sticky floor; I draw a picture of a wasp on the board, then a fly, then a cockroach. No one admits to liking these insects. I finish up with a picture of a big smiling world. "Today, after class, we'll all leave this room clean, okay?" I say.

Looking me straight in the eye, they all nod.

But after class, only Özgür and Ahmet remain to help me tidy up. "I hate mess," confides Özgür, who is thrilled to have learned the word. "My room friend big mess, every time."

"My room friend too," mutters Ahmet, lobbing an empty bottle into the waste bin.

So once again, my preaching has failed to reach the right ears. The only people who are committed to helping me are the ones who'd have done it anyway.

Together, my fellow converts and I finish cleaning the room.

Not One Of Those Days

I don't know why it is, but there are days I am the most dynamic, exciting teacher in the world. All my explanations make sense, my voice manages to carry to each and every student in the class, my jokes make everyone laugh, and I get nice compliments on my shoes. When I introduce new activities, my students really hop to it, eagerly opening their books and taking in my every instruction with breathless interest. The light of reason burns in their eyes and in the course of one class period, two or three kids will suddenly get that excited Oh, now I understand! look on their faces that I live for.

Today was not one of those days.

Really, I don't know what went wrong. I did everything I was supposed to do. I went into the classroom with a big smile on my face. I joked with the three somber looking kids who slouched in the back row, regarding me with baleful expressions. They didn't want to be there at eight thirty in the morning, learning about the difference between the present perfect and the simple past. They didn't want to pair up with their neighbors and discuss past trips to Istanbul or how many times they'd visited the Blue Mosque. And boy oh boy oh boy, they sure didn't want to write letters.

It all started the minute the letter writing thing came up.

No sooner do I tell them to take out a piece of paper than mass eye rolling occurs. The ceiling is stared at and minutely examined; despairing looks are exchanged; sighs of exasperation are hissed out.

I decide to bring out my big guns right away. "Last term there was an informal letter on the final exam," I tell them, raising my voice to shouting pitch to drown out their groans and protracted sighs, "so it's very important for you to learn how to write one."

Last term the students were asked to produce an informal letter as part of their final examination. A salutation line, apology for not writing sooner and a brief explanation for this negligence, then a chatty little paragraph followed by an entreaty to write again soon, and best wishes. Piece of cake, right? We've been over this before, and there are several detailed samples to choose from in their textbooks. But for my students, it might as well be War and Peace.

"It's not that big a deal," I persist, raising my voice to throat-straining volume. "I'll explain everything again, and you've got good examples in your book to follow--"

"Formal letter, tee-cha?" asks Bulut, mouth hanging open. "Long letter?"

"Informal. Remember, just like the one in your writing bo--"

"Tee-cha," interrupts Ilker, his forehead puckered and furrowed, "what is deal?"

Book in hand, I pause. "I'm sorry?"

"Deal. You say."

"I'm sure I didn't!"

Aysa purses her lips. "You say! Big-adeel."

I could kick myself. Although I monitor my language carefully, I hate the sound of my dumbed-down English -- hate the pedantic teacher-talk quality of my voice -- and when I get nervous, I am all too likely to let loose with something colloquial. Which is really stupid because inevitably a student quotes me out of context, mangling my words just a tad, and I'm damned if I can remember what I said.

"When did I say it?"

"Now!" Aysa and Ilker chorus. "You say big-adeel!" Aysa chastises.

Oh God, now I get it. "Not that big a deal," I splutter. "I said that writing a letter isn't that big a deal."

Every single face stares back at me in confusion.

"What is mean?" asks Bulut.

Why don't I just keep my big mouth shut and save myself some headaches? On the board I write, NOT THAT BIG A DEAL = NOT VERY IMPORTANT

"Letter not very important?" murmurs Yonca. "You say letter important."

"Very important," echoes Bulut, his eyes hard and suspicious.

The others are staring at me too and I can see it in their eyes: Stupid teacher, always changing her mind, telling us contradictory things! The entire back row is now speaking in Turkish and half the kids are surreptitiously checking their watches. Only twenty minutes until break time!

Some days I really am a fantastic teacher, take my word for it. My explanations are concise, my analogies are clear and apt, my anecdotes are succinct and engaging.

But today was not one of those days.

Like That When I Got Here

Onur stands in the hallway, his face lit up by euphoria. He looks as though he could easily spread his arms and fly. Onur has just seen his test results and while they were not great, they were good enough. He has passed. Smooth sailing from now on; no more tiresome sessions with his grammar book, no more slogging through present perfect vs simple past, or first and second conditionals. "Thank you so much for everything, tee-cha," he breathes, practically pumping my hand in a rush of happiness. I am touched by his gratitude, but how can I take the credit? He's a smart kid to begin with, and he got out as much as he put in -- I just wish he'd done more.

Ceyda hangs back, her eyes swollen and red-rimmed, her face the picture of misery. She is usually noisy, boisterous, full of silliness, but today she is dead serious, laid low. The last time I saw Ceyda, she was eating baklava and posing for a photograph with a group of girls as giddy and mindless as she is, utterly deaf to my reminders to study. And I'm guessing she didn't study: Ceyda's score was well below the pass mark. "My father will angry," she almost weeps now. "He will too much angry!" All I can do is give her a sympathetic smile and think Don't blame me. She's not a stupid kid by any means, but she is lazy. She got as much as she put in too -- which was precious little.

Teaching can be so discouraging! I can encourage, provide materials, instruct, advise, remind, chastise, nag, and create a relaxed classroom atmosphere. I can analyze what my students need to learn, distill it until it is fit for their comprehension, and do my best to impart what knowledge needs to be imparted. But what I cannot do for my students is study. And sadder still, I cannot get inside their heads and hearts and fire them up with the passion to learn. I cannot inspire those who do not want to be inspired; I cannot motivate those who want to be elsewhere, doing other things.

All of my students have a clear vision of the carrot -- the diploma, parental approbation, a whirlwind of parties, the sheer joy of no more school, even the hazy promise of employment in these difficult times -- but a lot of them are clueless about what it takes from them to achieve that carrot.

And sometimes you get kids that are clueless, period.

"Tee-cha," wailed two girls with mournful expressions during the first week of classes, "we have problem. Repeat students."

"Pardon me?" I asked, flabbergasted. Neither girl had the accent down pat.

"Last year, this class, fail. This year repeat."

"Why do you have to repeat?" I asked.

"Tee-cha trouble!" they chorused, arms linked.

"Teacher trouble?"

They nodded, faces serious.

I smelled a rat: their spiel sounded rehearsed. And their eagerness to blame their teacher for their poor performance struck a warning bell: teachers know there are bad apples among us, but we're inclined to give our colleagues the benefit of the doubt. And all of us with any modicum of experience know that the sure sign of a crappy student is one who blames the teacher for her failure to learn. I'm not saying bad teachers don't exist -- I've had plenty myself. But blaming the teacher straight off the bat is a bad idea.

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that," I said evasively. "But all you have to do in my class is pay attention, study, and turn in the assignments. Do that and you will almost certainly pass. Okay?"

"Yes tee-cha, we try!"

Like hell they did. Over the next three months, these two girls huddled together and resisted all attempts to separate them. They refused to speak English, disrupted my classes with their endless chatter, showed up late, concocted an improbable number of illnesses and excuses, and -- on memorable occasions -- slept through whole lessons. More than once I had to send both of them out of the classroom in disgrace; more than once I had to take them outside for a talking-to.

None of it did a lick of good.

Both girls turned in sub-standard homework, at best, failed their midterms and every pop quiz, and out-and-out plagiarized their final compositions, even after numerous warnings about my zero-tolerance policy. I caught one of them climbing out of the classroom window once, and I could not count the times I've arrived back in class after a 15-minute break only to be approached by one or both with an urgent request for the toilet.

I could happily throttle these two girls. They've had every opportunity. I've given them pep talks, nagged them, warned them, coached them, encouraged them whenever I honestly could -- all for nothing. And yet I'm pretty sure that they will write their failure off as teacher trouble.

Still, I wish it were as simple as Study hard and you will pass, fool around and you will fail. In truth, it is more complex, involving things like attitude, aptitude, nerves, and plain old luck.

"Tee-cha!" booms Cenk, my hyperactive, disrespectful class clown and a massive pain in the neck, "how are you?" There is something so hail-fellow-well-met in his tone that I don't have to look at his results to tell he's passed. Not only did he pass, but he did so with a respectable margin. If I'd known he was capable of that much, I'd have worked him a lot harder.

Esra stands behind him, hanging her head in disappointment and embarrassment. She is a shy, sweet girl who has never missed a class; she studies hard, turns in extra work, and never copies others' assignments. Sadly, she tends to panic during tests too; she has failed her examination and will have to repeat the course.

If I can't take credit for Cenk passing, I'm not sure I can take the blame for Esra failing either.

"Tee-cha!" someone behind me calls joyfully, "I am pass!"

It's Özgül, a rather lazy plodder who has spent half her time in class biting the split ends off her long hair.

"Was it hard?" I ask her as we walk along.

"Very hard. But writing part is not so hard."

"Really?" I'm amazed by this. Özgül is one of the kids who could not wait to get out of class. Who would have her sweater on, her bag over her shoulder, and one leg off her chair before I could announce the homework. And she has complained loud and long about the writing assignments being too hard.

"Writing is okay," she says simply. "We did in class so many times."

This one I believe I will take credit for.

Excuses, Excuses

"Tee-cha, I am here?"

Oh God, no, it's Tanol.

I get asked this question almost every day, after class. A cluster of students swarm around my desk; they have shown up late and want to make sure I have marked them down as present anyway. It's a headache trying to figure out who has a legitimate reason for being late and who was outside yakking with his buddies. But Tanol, who is also lazy and irresponsible, isn't just a headache, he's a 24-hour migraine. A few minutes around Tanol and I wonder why I ever went into teaching in the first place: I have trouble suffering fools.

I can't figure out what Tanol is doing in the pre-academic English program. He's slightly older than the majority, already in his early twenties, but otherwise there is nothing to mark him out as different. He looks bright enough, his face is pleasant, even handsome, and he doesn't suffer from any obvious infirmity. But Tanol's ordinary features belie a vacuity that is almost staggering. After repeating the program twice, he still cannot string together an English sentence for the life of him. I am told that he speaks Turkish just fine -- indeed, he speaks it non-stop throughout the very few classes he has managed to attend -- and he seems not to suffer from real learning difficulties. But when asked to do the simplest task in English, Tanol becomes overwhelmed: his brow furrows; his eyebrows knit; his lips pucker. "Whaaat?" he whispers. In Turkish.

The first time this happened, the rest of the class thought it was so funny they shrieked, hooted, and pounded on their desks, and it took me ages to get everyone settled. I repeated myself several times, growing angrier and angrier, but Tanol still pretended to be flummoxed -- or so I thought. It took me a good two minutes to realize that he wasn't pretending anything; he genuinely did not know what Please take your book out meant.

"I am here?" he whispers again, gesturing hopefully at the roll book. He missed the first forty-five minutes of class and sashayed in fifteen minutes late for the next session with no apology, so no way am I going to mark him present.

But try telling him that.

"No," I say, putting away my markers. "You were late." I tap my watch meaningfully.

His brow furrows. "But -- here now."

I put my yoga breathing to good use. Please let me keep my temper! "But you were fifteen minutes late." I pull a marker back out of my bag and scrawl it on the board. "Fifteen minutes. Yeah?"

He stares at me uncomprehendingly and I sigh and erase the board. Others are trying to push past him, demanding to know when their papers will be marked; one boy wants to know what the difference is between almost and mostly and another wants to know what to study for the final examination even though I've explained it in class half a dozen times. Tanol takes a step closer to me, his eyes pleading. Time for tough love. I steel myself not to crack and turn my back on him.

Last week, Tanol showed up in class late after missing two months' worth of school, with no explanation -- though an explanation is no easy thing to get from him. He then proceeded to sleep through inseparable phrasal verbs and I didn't even bother trying to wake him up. The next day, he came to class twenty-five minutes late without his textbook, notebook, or pen. We were right in the middle of a complicated exercise and Tanol's noisy entrance ruined the tenuous order I'd worked so hard to establish. My compassion fatigue strained to the limit, I lost it: I told him to go home.

"Why?" he asked, looking genuinely perplexed. Around Tanol, I always feel so mean.

"You are late, and you do not have your book."

Tanol pursed his lips and frowned.

I took a long, deep breath. "Look, even if you had your book, we only have twenty minutes of class left."

His jaw dropped and he tilted his head, a furrow deepening between his eyebrows.

"For pity's sake, somebody explain it to him," I hissed. Someone did, and Tanoy left with a face like thunder. Ten minutes later, he was back, huffing and puffing -- and clutching his book. I didn't have the heart to tell him to leave. He actually opened his book and tried to follow what we were doing for the last ten minutes of class, making me feel almost as sorry for him as I feel for his parents.

Today, though, Tanol is determined not to be marked absent. The thirty minutes of English he has endured must be counted. No sooner have I sat down in the teachers' room with a cup of coffee than there is Tanol with a friend. The friend speaks good English and it appears he is to be Tanol's interpreter. "Excuse me, teacher," he asks, "Tanol is absent today?"

"Yes," I reply, fighting the urge to scream.

"Why?"

"Because he missed the first session and he was very late to the second."

The friend smiles ingratiatingly. "But it is my fault." Tanol beams at him encouragingly.

I put down my coffee. "Your fault?"

"Yes. I -- kept him."

This is just too much for me -- I feel something inside me snapping. Boneheadedness is forgivable, laziness is probably inherited (if my own kids are anything to go by), but getting your friends to do your dirty work? No, no, no, no, no! My compassion tank has officially run dry.

I frown at his friend. "Did you shut him up in your room?"

"No."

"Knock him unconscious?"

He shakes his head.

"Fool him into thinking that it was a different day? Threaten him? Bribe him to stay with you?"

He's beginning to back away, but I cannot stop myself. "Did you enslave him? Did you chain him to his desk?"

He shakes his head again and shoots Tanol a look that clearly says You didn't warn me that I would be dealing with a madwoman.

"Because unless you did any of those things, it's not your fault," I say, standing up. "Tanol is a grown man. He can get to his English classes on time just like everyone else. Tell him that for me, okay?"

The friend nods and gulps. "Okay, okay. Just -- I wanted to know," he splutters, edging away from me. Tanol trails after him, still looking perplexed.

I finish my coffee and put my head down on the desk. Why did I ever become a teacher?

Sigh. I wonder if Tanol will come to class on Monday...